K’s Story: He Told Me Nothing Happened

I was a freshman in college who was in awe of all the new opportunities and experiences around me. I had been taking a ballroom dancing class for half of an elective credit. I loved shows like so you think you can dance and dancing with the stars and I was terrified of the Freshman 15 so I figured this would be a good way to help stop it. There he was, tall, with a messy mop of brown hair and a lopsided smile. He was an instructor in the course, a senior. He moved in a way that was far more graceful than his unkempt appearance and crude humor would suggest. I always laughed at his jokes and felt butterflies in stomach anytime he asked me to dance. Many of the students friended the various ballroom instructors on Facebook so we would have access to the Facebook page for the class. On May 5th, 2011, I was in my dorm studying for an exam while all of my floor mates were making plans to go drinking. I heard the familiar ping indicating I had gotten a Facebook message. It was him. We had spoken briefly over Facebook before when I had questions about days when dances were and what moves we were supposed to know for an exam. This time he was initiating the conversation. He was curious as to why I was on Facebook and not out day drinking with everyone else. I told him I was studying and we talked a bit more and then he asked if I wanted to come over. I was really nervous and almost thought about saying no but convinced myself to shower and head over. When I get to his house, his roommate was at work so we were alone. He made us margaritas in honor of Cinco de Mayo and then we mixed up our holidays and turned on Boondock Saints. I take a sip of the margarita and realize its deathly strong. “This is fine,” I tell myself. “You can handle your alcohol, just take it slow.” I make a joke abut how strong the margaritas are and he tells me he ran out of mixer so he added more tequila than normal. At some point during the movie, we talk about Irish Car Bombs and how I’ve never had one. Lucky for me he has all the stuff to make one at his house. We go into the kitchen and I watch him pour the whole Guinness into my glass and he hands me the shot. I drop it in and begin chugging, not nearly fast enough. Because I hate people knowing I’ve failed at something, I drink the rest even though the cream is definitely already curdling. He then notices my margarita glass is empty. He offers to make me another once the movie is over. Knowing I’ve had enough but not wanting to seem lame in front of someone I was attracted to I said yes. The movie ends and he puts on the Expendables. We wander back into the kitchen and I watch him make us more margaritas. I realize he’s pouring half a pint glass of tequila and then filling the rest of the glass with mixer. Each margarita has roughly 4 shots in it. I ask if that’s how he made the first ones too and he says yes and laughs. I swallow nervously and ask for a glass of water, hoping it will sober me up a little bit and give me a fighting chance against this margarita. About half an hour later, I’ve barely taken a sip of my margarita and he notices. His glass is almost empty. He gives me a crooked smile and swaps glasses with me. “Wanna make a bet? I bet that I finish your nearly full glass before you finish my nearly empty one.” Thinking I would definitely win, I agree. “What do you want if you win?” Knowing that this situation is obviously leading to sexual activity but not knowing how far I want to go, I respond with a coy, “I’ll decide when I win.” He smiles and confidently says “If I win, we have to make out.” We cheers and begin drinking. Seemingly one second later, Im looking over my tilted glass at him holding an empty one. He leans in to kiss me and I feel the butterflies come back. I kiss him back and we lay down on the bed. He takes off my shirt and begins to unbutton my pants. “Stop,” I whisper. “I don’t want to have sex.” “Why?” “Because I’m a virgin and this doesn’t feel like the right time.” He says ok and then asks if we can continue making out which I agree to. I black out… I come to and he’s on top of me and I’m not aware of what’s really happening but I can feel something of significant size inside of me. I softly say “No” over and over until he asks me “No what?” “No sex,” I say and black out again…. I come to and this time I’m in the shower without any clothes on. He’s in there with me, naked. He says I threw up on myself a little and that I needed to shower and he was helping… We get out of the shower and he brings me back to his bed and cuddles me. I black out again… I come to and realize it’s 11 and my dorm mates expected me back by now. I look over and see he’s asleep. I feel confused and slimy and dirty and ashamed and guilty. I grab my phone and my pants and my shirt and get ready to leave. His housemate comes out of his room to see me frantically looking for my purse in the living room. I give up on looking for it and ask him to take me back to my dorm. He asks if I’m ok and drives me back to my dorm when I am adamant that I am fine. I get back to my room and one of my roommates wake up and I jokingly tell her about everything that happened. She writes some of my drunken words down on a paper so we can read them again in the morning and falls back asleep. I throw up again and somehow magically managed to catch all of it in a plastic cup that I take down the hall to the bathroom to clean. Once in the bathroom I am hit with an overwhelming urge to pee. It hurts. I go to wipe and the toilet paper comes away bloody. I am aware that everything between my legs hurts. I tell myself I’ll ask him what happened the next day. I go to sleep. The next day I realize I had left almost everything I took with me the night before over at his house. I ask him if I can come over and get it. Once there, he asks me why I left without waking him. Trying to play it cool, I tell him I’m not the staying over kind of girl. I admit I don’t remember parts of the night and ask him what we did, while saying out loud (mostly to reassure and convince myself) that I specifically remember saying no sex. He tells me that I made good choices and that I was very responsible. I asked him why I was bleeding and he said it was probably because I was a virgin and I wasn’t used to people fingering me (even though he was definitely not the first to do that). I say ok and go back to my dorm, feeling a sense of dread and unease. I think I’ve been raped. I go back in my room and laugh about my sexual escapades with my roommates, not telling them what I really think happened. I didn’t want to seem like the sloppy girl who can’t hold her alcohol, or burden our relatively new friendship with something so dark. I decide to believe his lie and if I tell myself it was just fingering enough I’ll start to believe it. Besides, he had me shower so what good would a rape kit have done anyways? He’s not a bad guy. He was a drunk too. He didn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t lie to me. Or if he did, he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. I stopped going to ballroom as often after that and always found excuses to not hang out with him. I wouldn’t have sex (again?) until 2 years later when I turned 21. I’ll never know for sure what happened that night, but my torn apart vagina and knot of sadness that sits deep in my stomach tells me I lost something that day that I still haven’t quite gotten back. I no longer trust men and I’m pretty sure most men just want me for sex. I’ve not been in a long term relationship since high school and I don’t want one anymore, because I refuse to let any part of me to belong to someone else ever again.